Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies articles from March 2005

Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies archives from March 2005

Introduction: the 'whole world' of John McGahern.(Editorial)
March 22, 2005... 'I may not have travelled far but I know the whole world', [Jamesie] said with a wide sweep of his arm. 'You do know the whole world', Ruttledge said. 'And you have been my sweet guide'. (That They May Face the Rising Sun, p.312). In...

What is my language?
March 22, 2005... In James Joyce's 'The Dead', Gabriel Conroy and Miss Ivors have this confrontation: --Why do you go to France and Belgium, said Miss Ivors, instead of visiting your own land? --Well, said Gabriel, it's partly to keep in touch with...

'Only what happens': mulling over McGahern.(John McGahern)
March 22, 2005... What I'd like to do here is just offer, by way of appreciation, a few brief responses to some of what draws me into McGahern's work, elements that represent for me its enduring value. Voice Whenever I launch myself into a story or...

'A crack in the concrete': objects in the works of John McGahern.(John McGahern)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... At first glance, the work of John McGahern (1) looks like a Francis Ponge (2) inventory: 'Wheels', 'The Key', 'My Love, My Umbrella', 'Peaches', 'Gold Watch', 'Parachutes', 'Doorways' are titles of his short stories. Objects also make their...

'All toppers': children in the fiction of John McGahern.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... John McGahern's first two books were considered at the time of their publication to belong to a literature of protest, to be concerned most fundamentally with exposing the cruelties and privations of Irish rural life at mid-century. Despite...

The Irish novel in crisis? The example of John McGahern.
March 22, 2005... Given the rapid rate of social and economic change in Ireland in the past few decades, it would be logical to expect that the novel form should have undergone, and be undergoing, serious upheaval. However, that is not really the case generally...

'Robins feeding with the sparrows': the Protestant 'Big House' in the fiction of John McGahern.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... Just as certain motifs and observations recur in his novels and short stories, gaining strength and consolidation with each utterance, so too do the public pronouncements of John McGahern, such as they are, take form around the repetition of...

Death in marriage: the tragedy of Elizabeth Reegan in The Barracks.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... Elizabeth Reegan's tragedy unfolds in the bleak, postcolonial world of mid-twentieth-century rural Ireland. It is a world marked by economic stagnation where massive emigration has devastated the poorer regions of the country. It is a time when...

'All this talk and struggle': John McGahern's The Dark.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... The most striking stylistic feature of John McGahern's second novel, The Dark is that the narrative voice constantly shifts between the first, second, and third person, until in the concluding chapter there seems to be no discernible narrative...

John McGahern's Amongst Women: representation, memory, and trauma.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... Despite the prevailing enthusiastic reception of John McGahern's Amongst Women, (1) some readers detected in the novel's focus on rural Ireland of the 1950s a reluctance on his part to engage with contemporary Irish culture. Part of this...

'Open to the world': a reading of John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... John Banville remarked in his review of Amongst Women, 'We have the feeling that we have not so much been reading as living', and Thomas Kilroy expressed a similar view of the novel's impact: 'It conveys a sense of a force above and beyond the...

'All that surrounds our life': (1) time, sex, and death in That They May Face The Rising Sun.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... That They May Face the Rising Sun is in many ways an inexplicable novel, which is to say that it seems to break with, rather than emerge from, any trajectory or pattern established by John McGahern's earlier work. It is therefore worth...

Fallen nobility: the world of John McGahern.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... There is a temptation to interpret the writings of John McGahern as one last, loving exercise in the old Gaelic mode of caoineadh ar cheim sios na nuasal, a lament for fallen nobility: but the writer is also shrewdly aware that the announcement...

John McGahern--an annotated bibliography.(Bibliography)
March 22, 2005... 1. Works By McGahern Since McGahern is so popular in France, as is evident from the large body of criticism on his work produced by French academics, written in English as well as in French (see 4 below), and, more importantly, since he...

List of books reviewed.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2005... Campbell, Matthew (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (Sean Kennedy) Connolly, Linda, The Irish Women's Movement: From Revolution to Devolution (Wanda Balzano) Gray, Peter (editor), Victoria's Ireland?:...

Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004). 256 pages. USD 45.00. Near the end of his book, Joseph Lennon cites James Cousins writing of first hearing the poetry of...

Neil Murphy, Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt: An Analysis of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Fiction.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Neil Murphy, Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt: An Analysis of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Fiction. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd, 2004. xiii + 260 pages. USD 109.95. In recent decades, criticism of Irish literature has...

Christopher Murray. Sean O'Casey, Writer at Work: A Biography.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Christopher Murray. Sean O'Casey, Writer at Work: A Biography. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2004. 590 pages. 29.99 [euro]. Christopher Murray begins this study by addressing the essential dilemma in depicting the life of an individual like...

Kerry Hardie, The Sky Didn't Fall.(Mary O'Donnell, September Elegies)(Joan McBreen, Winter in the Eye: New and Selected Poems)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Kerry Hardie, The Sky Didn't Fall. Meath: Gallery Press, 2003. 61 pages. EUR 10.00. Mary O'Donnell, September Elegies. Belfast: Lapwing, 2003. 64 pages. EUR 10.00. Joan McBreen, Winter in the Eye: New and Selected Poems. Salmon...

Susan Cannon Harris, Gender and Modern Irish Drama.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Susan Cannon Harris, Gender and Modern Irish Drama. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xi + 307 pages. No price given. This book makes an argument that the trope of blood sacrifice works to reinforce gender stereotypes, so that...

Linda Connolly, The Irish Women's Movement: From Revolution to Devolution.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Linda Connolly, The Irish Women's Movement: From Revolution to Devolution. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2003. xvi + 308 pages. EUR 17.50. Generally speaking, in the international field of Irish Studies, the women's movement is still not...

Shaun Richards (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Shaun Richards (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 304 pages. STG 45.00/16.95. This collection of nineteen new essays on Irish drama, edited by Shaun Richards,...

Eve Patten, Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Eve Patten, Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004. 208 pages. EUR 55.00. Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland opens with an account of a paper read by Samuel...

Matthew Campbell (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Matthew Campbell (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 294 pages. GBP 15.95. The would-be editor of a Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry confronts a...

List of books received.
March 22, 2005... Abadi-Nagy, Zoltan (editor), HJEAS: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. Debrecen: Hungary. Vol. 9, No. 2 (Fall 2003). 282 pages. No price given. Abadi-Nagy, Zoltan (editor), HJEAS: Hungarian Journal of English and American...